Post navigation

[From
the article: In this video, eerie long-exposure photographs reveal the
invisible wifi networks that permeate our urban environments, making the cloud
available everywhere. …In order to study the spatial and material qualities of
wireless networks, we built a WiFi measuring rod that visualises WiFi signal
strength as a bar of lights. When moved through space the rod displays changes
in the WiFi signal. Long-exposure photographs of the moving rod reveal cross
sections of a network’s signal strength.]

[From
the article: “We
sell FAR more e-books that also have print counterparts than we do books that
are only available in electronic format…The perceived value of a book
that is in electronic and print formats is higher than one that’s a just a
throwaway, 99-cent e-book.” In other words, if vanity doesn’t keep authors
invested in print books, economic self-interest will. All that might seem
trivial, until you realize that the number of would-be authors in America is
skyrocketing—particularly among the younger generation. The number of
degree-granting U.S. creative writing programs has exploded from 79 to 854 in
the past 35 years. The average age of students starting these programs is twenty-six.
I’m lucky enough to be a student in one myself, and can attest anecdotally that
the goal of nearly every writer pursuing this degree is to see his or her words
realized in print book form]

[From
the article: Researchers have invented a new form of secret messaging using
bacteria that make glowing proteins only under certain conditions. In addition
to being useful to spies, the new technique could also allow companies to
encode secret identifiers into crops, seeds, or other living commodities. The
new glowing bacteria actually did grow out of a bit of cloak-and-dagger
thinking. Several years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
asked researchers to submit ideas for ways to encode secret messages without
the need for electronics. At the time David Walt, a chemist at Tufts University
in Medford, Massachusetts, teamed up with his former adviser George Whitesides,
a chemist at Harvard University. Together, they came up with a way to add a
variety of metal salts to a fuse that, when lit, would give off a sequence of
pulses of infrared light that encoded a message. That got them thinking about
other ways to accomplish the same thing. And so last year they decided to try
something else, using bacteria to encode their secrets.]